


When the White Wind Whistles

by Austennerdita2533



Series: The Fight Is All We Know [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, Final battles, Honestly idk how to tag this?, Post-canon (and s7), Romance, War, winter is here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-20
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2019-03-21 20:12:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13748400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Austennerdita2533/pseuds/Austennerdita2533
Summary: Life cannot be bought or bartered in the darkness. Only won. And then…even then it cannot be guaranteed.





	When the White Wind Whistles

**Author's Note:**

> I've never written Jaime and Brienne fic before but this idea kept nagging at me, so I thought I might as well give it a shot. (We've all got to start somewhere, right?)
> 
> Anyway, I hope you like it! *bites fingernails in earnest* 
> 
> xx Ashlee Bree

Another sunless dawn crests the horizon, winter wind chewing at the flaps of Jaime and Brienne’s _rat-tat-tatting_ tent to slash through tomorrow’s dreams, sprinkling Westerosi ashes atop their bootless feet like snow that will not stop accumulating. The burden of too many lives lost, of so many more still to fall, is as pungent and as putrid as the decaying flesh on their sheathed Valyrian blades. 

Once-sworn oaths to noble houses rip then unravel faster than the thread of a family cloak. So they say ‘fuck loyalty’ anymore unless it stops the dead from marching in, unless it sleeps and stands at their backs when hell descends on the wings of a monster that’s intent on cracking them into separates. Or, worse, forcing them into splintered halves again. They scream _‘_ fuck everyone - fuck everything’ - except not at that bloodthirsty resolve to protect and defend what little remains to them.

The earth is a tattered wasteland: so many people and places and old loves to mourn. Except they don’t grieve, not openly. How can they when this world no longer looks or feels like a home where they yearn to belong? 

Pieces of dismantled hope scatter across the space between Jaime and Brienne’s nearly touching foreheads because there’s nothing but blood stained on their hands and wildfire erupting through their veins now to keep the cold from halting their breath altogether. And breath is the one thing these two knights still want. Need. So why not claw and gulp and gasp for it? 

The bleeding sky above their nestled bedrolls reminds them that this new day calls for fighting, for cockeyed warriors hell-bent on sparring until one side triumphs over the other. Until one champion stands taller than them all. After all, isn’t combat what makes their bones sing, stirs their muscles into a harpsichord of fluid movement? Why shouldn’t they accept this hilt-kissed destiny from the Gods? Why not?

However, with Cersei’s green-eyed ghost haunting their sleep, and with casualties stacked nigh to the heavens - some loyal followers, friends; others foes who belong to the Night King - it seems as if no one wins. Only dies.

(And dies.)

(And dies.)

(And dies.)

Will it be her first, Jaime wonders? Will it be him? Or, Gods, could it…will it be cold fingertips which strangle them both in the end? He and Brienne—together?

_Stop. Don’t_. _No more of this,_ he reproaches himself silently, swapping out a growl for a grimace, _no more._

Some words are too dangerous to think, and he knows it _._ Tastes it. The iron in his gut is sharp and broken. Bitter in his lungs.

Time starts to feel borrowed, like a commodity growing emptier and emptier with each gust of the Long Night wind which moves closer. Too close. An unwelcome intruder in an unnatural world which must end, and it will end soon— _oh, yes_ —it shall.

Jaime thinks maybe time always was emptying from clouds over his head, that maybe it always would be. He knows he’s powerless to stop it. The flakes are already dropping to wilt against his chin, lips, arm, stump; against his breast where pounding life persists yet. (Almost in spite.) The _tick tick tick_ of moisture only stopping when it perishes on his skin first, then on hers next. 

Yet who’s to say how many days, hours, minutes, seconds any one of them has left to spend? (Or in his case, to waste.) Who knows how many more breaths he will heave with this ugly and terse, shy and sapphire-eyed ladyknight next to him in battle? Beside him in this makeshift bed? 

It’s the same every day now: _Live. Fight. Fuck. Eat. Sleep. Repeat_. It’s a routine. 

That’s what keeps their minds from reeling, their hearts from spoiling, words no longer splitting into whispered promises they know they can’t make let alone deign to keep. That’s what keeps their swords from failing to land their mark over and over again. It’s a swing and a thrust. It’s a strike and a plunge before it’s back to the defensive position as they watch the enemy hit the ground that’s no longer frozen, but reduced to ash that crunches underneath their forward marching.

Regimen feeds Jaime strength. Brienne purpose. Them each grit. It’s how they keep the horrors and questions they’re afraid to confront caged beneath ribs where they belong. Locked deep in sinew where they can burn in private places, away from familiar blades and scrutinizing faces. Away, away. 

Purple-green bruises and red gashes disappear beneath their armor each morning, only to then vanish against the other’s coarse dirtied skin beneath a thick animal fur each night they manage to survive. And survive they do, in a fashion. The bed and furs warming them in body, perhaps, but never in soul since survival on the morrow has no price. It has no fee which can be settled with Jaime and Brienne’s lustful yet tender frolicking beneath the sheets.

There’s no way to save anything here—not a hand, a head, a heart, a home. Certainly not them. 

Life cannot be bought or bartered in the darkness. Only won. And then…even then it cannot be guaranteed.

A kiss or two stolen in the shadows, the clash of steel in the yard when an argument turns sour enough to become provocative, almost seductive in its sweaty intensity; words bit from too wide lips then left to dangle from bicuspid teeth (forever unspoken), and the bottomless blue shimmer of Brienne’s eyes: those are the reprieves. Light stretches no further in this world. No nearer. There’s nothing else except battles to scheme and losses to count to pass the hours before they strike out against the enemy again, swords and dragons blazing. 

The White Walkers are relentless. The Night King is too fucking determined to freeze their toes, to collect every last one of their dead bones for the ice-kindling of his army. It leaves no rest for the living. No rest at all. 

It expedites the exploration of too many under-evaluated somethings between them. 

It’s only that one muscular pillar at their back—her, him—that hoists them upright and prevents Death from knocking the other flat onto one’s ass to become one more carcass. Neither of them will allow a fledgling of sacrificed flesh to slip out where a steel shield used to be. There’s only one person to trust to stop a wight from turning one’s beating heart into a crumpled-up stone of ice because fighting is all they know how to do. It’s all they do right. 

Apart or together, this bloody war is almost all they have left. 

Almost.

Jamie reaches out. Cups his good hand against the plane of Brienne’s face, chiseled like a man's since birth. He lets his thumb caress her angular jaw so he can graze the scarred flesh of her cheek with a tenderness he shouldn’t possess, the morning rising high with dread and destruction yet to come. 

A new day beckons, another love is lost to the night.

“Can I count on your sword? Are you - are you with me?” she blinks from her pillow all splotchy red neck and eyelashes which are lowered to confine those painful questions she carries in her head. Doubt so prominent there, it’s unable to be squeezed out no matter how hard he tries. 

“Til the end, wench,” Jaime grins back ruefully, mournfully. He's little better than a man drowning in sentences that are short - damn short - but not sweet. “Til the end _,_ ” he says with a press of his mouth.

Silence expands between them, sound loitering only in the _flit flap_ of the shelter which covers their snug but restless forms. Quiet envelops them like a blanket because this is not a conversation had with lips or tongues or teeth, but with eyes held in the fading starlight: his a molten green and hers a deepening blue isle which wash over feelings that’ll never find release. Not here in this whistling tent, anyway. And not by them in this final sliver of warmth and shared light. 

After all, if winter’s darkness has taught them one thing it’s this: 

_Some words are much too dangerous to speak._

**Author's Note:**

> Thoughts? Comments are lovely. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
